sam winchester (bornunder) wrote in the100, @ 2015-05-02 23:41:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread, kate bishop / hawkeye (616), sam winchester |
WHO: Sam Winchester & Kate Bishop
WHAT: waking up from spending the night together. Talking about stuff.
WHEN: the morning after this happened (backdated)
WHERE: Kate's room!
WARNINGS: Nudity, mostly implied. Kinda troubled feelings, talking about supernatural stuff.
Sam slept for what felt like a while, he didn’t know exactly how long. It was relatively quiet in this bunker, surrounded by rock, and apparently he didn’t snore-- and neither did she-- so there was very little to disturb him, save for when one of them shifted in their sleep. He woke a little bit every time she moved, just enough to be consciously aware of what had woken him, and then fell almost immediately back asleep. After the first few times it happened, he didn’t even bother to open his eyes. If she had been awake when she moved, he didn’t notice.
But later, hours later, there was a more significant movement, more deliberate. He was awake suddenly, on the alert, even though he hadn’t startled or even moved at all. Sometimes, in his line of work, it was important to pretend to be asleep-- so the instinct to jerk upright upon being awoken was mostly gone.
It wasn’t danger that had woken him this time, though. It was Kate, trying to get out of bed without waking him up.
He opened his eyes, yawned, and looked over at her. He wasn’t sure if her sneaking away meant something was wrong or not, so he erred on the side of caution and said simply, “Morning.”
--
"Oh god!" Kate started, dropping the sheet for only half a second, but it was long enough for her to fumble. It crumpled to the mattress, leaving her a little exposed in the slightly chilly morning air. Damnit. There went the surprise, but it was good to know he wasn't a heavy sleeper. She was a tosser, she knew, frantically turning over whenever she'd spent too long on one side. That must have been annoying. After their mother died, her sister pleaded to sleep with Kate. She'd spent the whole night kicking Kate in the back.
After she regained her composure, but not her dignity, her eyelids fluttered. With an heavily exhaled breath, she let the tension in her shoulders wash away. "You scared the living bejebus out of me."
--
For someone who enjoyed flustering him so much, she was pretty easily ruffled herself sometimes. It got a small smile out of Sam, and he couldn’t have said he minded the view either. He sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Did you forget I was here?”
He was a little hard to miss, so he doubted it. But something was up, and he didn’t know what it was, so he wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. More seriously, he added, “You don’t have to sneak out. It’s your room, I can go.”
--
Kate stopped reaching for the sheets with those words. I can go. They were spoken like someone who was used to hearing them. Like someone who didn't think he deserved to be in someone else's bed. Kate could feel her heart squeezing just a little bit. She crawled over the bed to where he was, leaned down and kissed him in the same way she had after they'd had sex. Soft, tender, with what she hoped was enough feeling that her next words would be believed.
"I was going to sneak down to the mess hall and get us breakfast." Her cheeks pinkened a little at that. It sounded really cheesy to say out loud. "Breakfast in bed. I've never actually done that for anyone."
--
That wasn’t what Sam was expecting. Not because he didn’t think she wanted to have breakfast with him-- up until the moment he’d realized she was getting out of bed, he’d been under the impression that was the plan. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, if he was being totally honest. This was kind of unfamiliar territory in a lot of ways, even as it was familiar enough in others.
But things were still about the same as they’d been the night before, going by the kiss and the way she was looking at him. The small smile reappeared on his face, and he rubbed his fingertips over his own cheek. “You don’t have to do that.”
--
"You're kidding. I don't? Here, I thought it was some kind of prerequisite for seeing you again." Kate was full of sarcasm, even if it was the kind that went along with a teasing smile and a nuzzle against the side of his face. His hair tickled her nose. "I kind of just didn't want to share you in the mess hall."
She also knew that whatever bubble of warmth was left lingering in this room would dissipate as soon as they stepped outside just by virtue of being around other people. His brother was the type to slap Sam on the back, of course, and then there was Noh who might very well be having pancakes down there. If they had pancakes this morning. There was talk about rationing of grains. Did they have almond flour or other kinds? Maybe that was something they could look into. There were plenty of Jobi nuts, as they called them. Pancakes were just very important, okay?
--
“No. There aren’t any prerequisites.” Sam knew she was joking, and his own tone was light, teasing, in response. Even if they did it in a joking way, these were important things to say. “I like you. I’m still going to like you in the mess hall. Whenever I get there.”
Lightheartedness aside, he meant what he said. Wherever they had breakfast this morning, they were going to have to part ways eventually; they’d have to go to work, see their friends and family, eat other meals. He knew she was practical enough to understand that, and if she was worrying that he was going to be different now that they’d slept together, he wanted to put those worries to rest.
Well, things were a little different. The way he felt about her was different, but not in a bad way.
“You can’t keep me locked up here forever,” he pointed out, amused. “But if you really don’t want me to go yet, then I’ll stay.” His hand ran over her back, playing with her hair. “You can go. Or you can stay a little bit longer… and then go.”
--
"The surprise part of it is gone," Kate said, tapping her lips in mock thought. She twisted at the waist to let her weight rest on the bed once more, no longer poised to flee. "So maybe I can just stick around a little longer, and then we'll both go. And I'll try a surprise.. thing some other time." Because she was pretty certain there would be other mornings together.
Now that he was awake, it seemed pretty dumb to get dressed, head out to the mess hall, and then come back. Especially not when the bed was still warm. Kate curled up on her side and let her smile widen. "So you like me, huh?"
--
That made Sam smile. He settled back down onto the bed, onto his side, and reached out one hand across the mattress between them to curl his fingers around hers. He shifted a little closer, glad that she wasn’t leaving, even if leaving didn’t signal that anything was wrong.
“Yeah,” he said simply, no teasing or joking, but not especially serious either. Just a simple statement of fact. “I do.”
--
Brownie points for being so matter-of-fact about it. So many brownie points that Kate leaned forward and kissed him again. Were these things he'd picked up from his brother? Or was it just something that Sam knew instinctively, the whole how to say just the right thing at the right time. Her fingers curled in his hair loosely and continued to comb through it when she pulled away. "In case you haven't noticed, I like --" Her voice cracked in the middle of the word, giving it weight she hadn't been intending. "--you too."
The truth was, in the "light" of morning, she was terrified of getting attached. The last time she let herself get attached, she'd had her heart broken. Maybe Noh hadn't known, but he'd really crushed her. Kate didn't do sad, or she tried not to. She did angry, and then she went to California because Clint was doing the pushing everyone away thing he always did. She couldn't run away to California if things went bad here.
--
“You were very subtle,” Sam said lightly, completely in jest. She hadn’t been subtle at all, right from the very beginning, but he generally preferred it when things happened that way. Making the first move had never been his strong suit. “But I picked up on it.”
He wasn’t sure exactly why her voice had cracked, but decided not to ask. He’d already read more than was probably his business-- it had been public, of course, but still-- and he wanted to know, but he was willing to wait for her to tell him. They had time, or at least, more time than he was used to having. How much time, he didn’t really know, but he was content to spend it just keeping her company.
--
Ironically, when she'd originally commented to him about him being heaven, she hadn't been serious at all. It was the perfect punchline for what he'd mentioned, and it was just a funny coincidence that his looks made the joke work. If he'd been ninety years old, with liver spots and a bad toupee, there was no way she could play it off. But the more they talked, the more she enjoyed it. Soon enough though, there were actual feelings going along with it, even as she tried to keep the conversations light and teasing.
"Subtle as a jackhammer. It's never been my strong suit.." Nosy and ballsy, absolutely. Subtle? Nope. Ask Mr. Weed Lord. "What about you? How's your subtlety?"
--
“Mm,” Sam said. “I think I’m pretty subtle. When I’m trying to be.” Which, admittedly, had gone out the window a little bit here. He had been reserved, still was to a certain extent, but it was too late to pretend that modest and easily flustered was all there was to him. And it was way too late to pretend to be someone he wasn’t, someone not a hunter, not massively messed up the way he was, even if he’d only hinted at how fucked up his life had really gotten. “For the record, I’m not trying to be.”
He was trying to be the opposite of subtle, because it seemed like he could be. That maybe, for once, things could be pretty straightforward and open. He wasn’t getting his hopes up too much, or at least he was trying not to, but the possibility was there. If he worked at it.
--
"Good, because I have a habit of punching subtlety in the face. Numerous times. Until it stops being subtle." She said it jokingly, but Kate knew that deep down, it was true. She didn't like people playing coy, she hated when people kept things from her (at least things that were bad). Her father had kept that he was on Madame Masque's payroll from her. Noh had kept his real feelings from her. Eli lied about being a super soldier and his drug use. Clint bottled up his emotions and withdrew. Kate wasn't on board with any of that.
She wasn't trying to scare him away, and she hoped it wouldn't. Sometimes you just had to be clear about what you expected. "Okay. So. I need more information about you. Favorite breakfast food."
--
“Good to know,” Sam said. It did scare him, a little, but not in the way she was worried about; he didn’t want to let her down, or hurt her. No matter how much he tried, his instincts tended to lead him astray on that front. But his life was all back home, to come in his future (maybe, assuming he got back to it, although he wasn’t in any rush), and this life had started out differently. Maybe it could keep going differently, too.
It was his turn to play with her hands, brushing his fingers over her knuckles, then tracing her wrist and palm. “Mm. I like fresh fruit. Usually with yogurt.” He cracked a small smile. “But a lot of days all I eat for breakfast is a protein bar.”
--
"Kind of hard to be a health food nut around here, huh?" Kate tried to eat well, but things like pizza and candy and ice cream got in the way sometimes. At least she tried to go organic for all those things? Whatever. She was young enough that it was all right. Maybe one day she'd have to focus on that more. As it was, she was so incredibly active all the time that it didn't really matter. Fruit and yogurt though.
"We went on the run for a few months, but America -- my friend friend, pretty new to the Young Avengers -- she could create star-shaped portals so we always went to this one dimension for breakfast at our favorite place." She cracked a grin that grew more and more fond as she spoke. "There was a lot of pancakes and bacon."
--
“Hard to be a health food nut as a hunter, too,” Sam said, shrugging. “We live on the road. Usually our breakfast stop is at a gas station. So this place isn’t too bad.”
By comparison, the food was actually pretty fresh. Most things were grown or hunted right here. That was something he kind of liked about the place. In truth, it really wasn’t the worst place to end up stuck. Even if it was the end of the world.
He smiled. “You really do a lot of dimension-hopping, don’t you? Just pop into another one to have breakfast, then get back to your own world for lunch.”
--
"Road trips are the best and the worst, aren't they?"
Heading out to California had been amazing. Seeing things she wouldn't normally simply by virtue of being on an airplane. Getting to know people along the way. She'd been so hopeful and full of excitement. That was before she found out that her father had canceled her credit card for not bowing down to his second wife (who went to school with Kate). The trip back had been a much more mad dash to make it back in time to save Clint from becoming one of Madame Masque's victims. Her life in California had turned out to be one madcap moment after another until she gave up and went home. Crappy gas station food was just par for the course, really.
"Just for a few months." Most days, she didn't like to think of that time period, and it had nothing to do with relationship woes or all the running they did. There were just some horrible dimensions where they were all birds or spiders with their human heads. Or robots. Or women with literal black holes for heads. "We had to keep on the run. Billy had let this interdimensional parasite into our world, and she took up residence in our dimension. Basically any time we went there, she'd follow and take over the minds of anyone who felt a parental bond. As you can imagine… Not pleasant."
--
“Does it count as a road trip when it’s what you’ve done pretty much every day for your whole life?” It was a serious question, since that was basically how his life had went. Sam smiled. “It’s not too bad. Being stuck in the car with my brother isn’t always fun. But it’s how we grew up, so we’re pretty used to it.” He paused, then added, “I hear we’re going to inherit a bunker from my dad’s side of the family later on. Not quite like this one, though.”
It was strange to think about that part of the future. He comprehended well enough that it was going to happen, that there was an awful lot more to come-- he could see the evidence of it all in Dean, and Cas, and now even Bobby-- but he had trouble imagining a place that they’d made a home. Well, having been here for so long it wasn’t quite as hard to imagine anymore.
It also wasn’t hard to imagine the situation that Kate was describing. Maybe it would have sounded strange to literally anyone else, but he could easily imagine that kind of a parasite, and the havoc it would wreak. “Did you manage to get rid of it? The parasite, I mean.”
--
"Billy did. He went all demiurge on her. He's kind of some weird prophetic godlike figure in some dimensions. I don't understand any of that stuff. He's powerful, and Loki wanted to use him so he could sort of whisper in his ear the laws that Billy would end up creating. Or something." Kate frowned deeply. Loki had set them on that whole damn path: running away for months on end. No end in sight. They'd spend a good chunk of that time following PatriNot, trying to figure out what that bastard had done to Tommy. "There was a big battle. We got some friends -- like Nico -- to help us out. Some stuff happened. Billy saved us. The end."
There were other things too. Billy and Teddy had reconciled. Loki had come to terms with the fact that he'd murdered himself -- it was a whole multiple soul/essence thing that was too complicated to understand, let alone try to explain. Noh broke up with her mid-battle. When Loki came clean, every villain except for Mother disappeared. Billy did his thing, and it was over. They could finally go home.
Not that Kate wanted to go home. Her father was still dating Heather, who had gone to high school with her. And was on a villain's payroll. It was night to be in her home dimension though. She still had friends to see, and a Clint Barton to keep an eye on. The big car crash.
"Do you like being on the road? Or do you want, like, a place to call home with the white picket fence and the dog and everything?" It was an honest question, and wasn't coming from a place of do you want marriage or any of that other BS, though in a few hours, she'd probably overthink this conversation and worry that he thought she was trying to tie him down. "Seems like everyone who has one wants the other."
--
There were a few things Sam could have said-- asked more about Billy’s powers, said something about how it was right that he should get to take down the parasite he’d accidentally let into the world, which was apparently what he was going to do to Lucifer-- but the way she finished the story left him feeling like maybe he shouldn’t press it. The ambiguous “stuff happened”, in particular, made him think that it hadn’t been an easy battle to fight-- or maybe that was his own experience talking. But his experience was pretty realistic for this kind of thing, so he didn’t think he was too far off track.
“I don’t mind it,” he said. “It feels like home, in a way. We still have the car that my dad drove us around in when we were kids. That part isn’t so bad. It’s all the… darkness, monsters, gore, end of the world, horrible destinies… that’s the part I don’t like so much.” He took a deep breath. “I wouldn’t mind having a home, and a real job. But I tried that once, and… it didn’t work out well.”
--
"What happened?"
It was an automatic reaction. It didn't work out well usually meant something happened to make him think that, so it was just her naturally curious mind that blurted out the question. Never mind that his world was full of demons and monsters, and that didn't usually lead to rainbows and puppies and candy. Her neutral and interested expression turned slightly concerned as she realized her question.
"I didn't -- you don't have to answer that. It's not -- it's none of my business."
--
Sam looked at her for a long moment without answering. Debating whether or not to answer the question. On the one hand, he really wasn’t sure that this was a good time to talk about a past relationship, especially one that significant, or to bring up more death. But in weighing the possibility of her upset at hearing the story against the way things would be if he kept it secret, he decided that the former was better.
Not that it seemed like she was going to blame him for keeping this one to himself. But it also wouldn’t encourage her to open up, and he really wanted to get to know her. He knew all too well that in order to earn trust, he often had to extend a little bit first-- and as his stories went, this one wasn’t the hardest to tell.
“I went to college,” he said. “Got away from hunting, and my family, for a while. And… met someone. Then… right before I was going to graduate, planning on going to law school, get married, be normal… I went to help my brother find our dad. And while I was gone, a demon came to the house and… killed her.” He shrugged one shoulder, offering a small smile that really only served to make him seem sadder. “I went back to hunting to find the demon. And then… more stuff happened.”
--
Kate's little bit of heartbreak seemed so very small in comparison. She drew in a slow but sharp breath and tried to figure out how to reply. There wasn't really anything you could say in a situation like this that would make anything any better. I'm sorry always seemed so cheap. My gain was heartless. Still, she wouldn't wish that on anyone. She reached out for his hand and squeezed it.
"That pretty much -- I don't know what I was expecting you to say in answer to that. Seriously. I'm sorry. That had to be really rough." That smile was hiding a lot of grief. Even the knowledge that that was years ago didn't make it any better. "Did you ever find the demon?"
--
“It’s okay,” Sam said, meaning it. He gave her a little smile, a more believable one this time. “I told you I’d tell you what you want to know. But… most of my stories are like that. Some are even worse.”
He took a deep breath, fingers curling around hers, and nodded. “Yeah, we tracked it down eventually. There were patterns to follow. Omens, warning signs… the way it killed people. The way Jess died was just like how my mother died when I was a baby. It went after other families, too. But we caught up to it, and Dean killed it.”
It was a good thing that the demon was dead. Sam really just wished the story ended there. But there was so much more to the story that he wasn’t going to tell now. There was a lot he was willing to tell, but everything to do with Lucifer… that was a place he really didn’t want to go just yet.
--
"Good." Kate frowned and shook her head. That wasn't quite… "I mean, not good that it killed other people. Or your mother -- jeez, this thing had a taste for women, did it?" Of course it did, because most things that slithered and preyed on people liked to pick women. The same was true in her universe too. That just reminded her of her own experiences, and there was no way she was reliving any of those. Way too soon. Not even her friends knew.
She shifted on the bed, having stayed in one spot long enough to get that weird ache. She flopped on the bed and pulled the sheet up over her chest. It somehow felt weird in the morning to just lay right out. She turned to look at him, a little sheepish. "Where do you go after asking someone a question like that and getting the answer? Do you try and segue into happier territory? Or do you venture further down the rabbit hole?"
--
“Children, actually,” Sam said, with a sigh. They were venturing towards territory that was less comfortable, but he didn’t stop, just yet. “It killed mothers when they tried to protect their kids. And pushed the kids… like me… down the paths it wanted us to be on. But that’s a much, much longer story.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to put all of that aside. He felt her move on the bed, and after a moment he shifted to lie on his back beside her, his shoulder brushing hers. “Oh, by all means, distract me,” he said wryly. “It’s a big, dark rabbit hole. You’ve gone in far enough for one day.”
--
Cripes. Children? Kate hated people who hurt children. And babies. And mothers trying to protect their children. It was always especially sad when something happened to a small child. Was the demon doing something to the kids? Did the mothers get in the way of that? What was the purpose of this path? There were so many questions floating around in her head.
It was only fair to volunteer something personal about herself. "My ex-boyfriend showed up Friday. He broke up with me during that battle I mentioned. For an ex who was a villain. And was fighting against us at that very moment. She looked like a dominatrix."
--
Given how many questions she’d asked already, Sam would have been surprised if his story hadn’t left her with more questions than answers. He probably would answer them, eventually. Maybe he should have tried to answer them all now, just rip off the band-aid. It wouldn’t have been that many more words, really. But he was afraid of admitting to being demon-blooded, to being Lucifer’s vessel, to having drunk the blood himself. Even though she’d been handling his stories pretty well so far, that was still… a lot to take in. And he wasn’t ready for her view of him to change, if it was going to.
Hopefully she’d forgive him for keeping it a secret just a little bit longer.
The amount that he’d told, at least, had accomplished what he’d been hoping for. She was trusting him just that little bit more in return. His way of going about getting to know her wasn’t quite so direct, didn’t involve as many questions-- it was more subtle, was another way of putting it-- but his intentions were good. He wanted to get to know her because he cared. More than he probably should, if he was being totally honest with himself.
“I noticed him,” he said, in the interest of continuing to be honest. “I try to read the network pretty thoroughly. I like to know what-- or who-- I’m dealing with.” He frowned slightly, not really sure how to respond to the rest of her story. He would have had an easier time with it if not for the fact that it concerned her ex-boyfriend, which was… well, complicated. Given that they had just slept together. “That… sounds like a terrible decision on his part.”
--
"The best part?" Kate's eyebrows rose as she turned her head to look at him. It was only the best part in retrospect. And not really the best. More like the bit where you had to laugh at something because it was just too upsetting otherwise. "It wasn't even her. It was some weird illusion that vanished." She waved a hand around. "It's been a few months for me, but apparently not for him so that makes things really… awkward. I've had a lot of other things on my mind, and it's hard to really be upset about it when people have died, you know?"
She shrugged. "My mentor -- my Avengers mentor -- he got stabbed in the ear, and is now deaf. His brother ended up in a wheelchair and then died. His life is a car-crash, and I can't help but want to help him. He's like that stupid old brother who is constantly getting in trouble."
--
Sam’s expression said more than he could have put into words. He knew what it was like to be drawn in by a villain, of course, but not quite in the same way-- and he couldn’t imagine choosing Ruby over someone like Kate, if he’d had someone like her in his life at the time. Not like that, anyway. He might have still tried to use her, and her blood, to kill Lilith. But that part wasn’t important, he wasn’t interested in comparing life choices with Kate’s ex. The important thing was that he knew what betrayal looked like on the faces of people he cared about, and he didn’t like seeing it in Kate. Even if it wasn’t his fault. Adding on grief and a desperate desire to help an older brother figure… well, he could relate to and empathize with all of it. Strongly enough that it made his heart ache for her.
He turned over, pressing closer to her, one arm sliding around her waist. There were some things that were difficult to respond to, just like the things he’d just said to her, and he’d always found that touch helped more than words in a lot of cases. Especially when words weren’t coming very easily.
“The smaller stuff can still be upsetting,” he said finally, after a moment. He pressed a soft kiss to her bare shoulder, and added, “Not that… it was a small thing, what he did, but relative to lives being lost. Things like that just kind of pile on top of you.”
And maybe to her, her heartbreaks seemed small by comparison to his, but he didn’t see it that way. His own difficulties seemed to pale by comparison whenever someone he cared about was hurting, and he would have taken on her pain if he could have.
He couldn’t, of course, not really. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t help her at all.
--
It wasn't too long ago that Kate felt like it was the worst thing in the world. Eli had left them, and she had understood. Cassie died doing what they did, and none of them could really stand to look at each other. Every time she did, she saw a memory of Cassie. She'd want to gossip with Cassie about Billy and Teddy and talk about how much of an idiot Tommy had been that day. She could handle Eli's abandonment, because everyone else had left. It made the breakup more tolerable.
Noh-Varr, though… She'd live with him for months while they tried to figure out a way to save their dimension, to destroy Mother. There was also the sneaking suspicion that he'd been talking with Oubliette behind her back, too. All those times she found him on his phone. Had they been planning to run away together?
Still, if it hadn't happened, this -- with Sam -- it wouldn't have happened, and she was really glad it had. Her arms rose so that she slip one of her arms over his and then entwine her fingers with his. "Those other dimensions… They weren't all normal. A lot of them were just weird hellish dimensions. Flash in the pan stuff. Way too many worlds where Noh-Varr and his people devoured our planet. Versions of me and my friends with horrifying bodies that weren't human, and of course evil. I still get nightmares from time to time. Not as bad as I used to though."
--
Hellish dimensions. It wasn’t the first time Sam had heard about other versions of the afterlife dimensions he was already familiar with, or would be familiar with, at home. Heaven, hell, purgatory… a different purgatory, a realm called Limbo. It made sense that in multiple worlds there would be other dimensions and realms like that, it even made sense that alternate universes would work so differently, but it still gave him a little bit of pause every time he heard about it. Because the rule book had been thrown out, or rather there were too many new and different sets of rules, too many new and different worlds.
Sam could comprehend the big picture just well enough to find it intimidating, and also… strangely comforting. The weight of his world had been on his shoulders, but there were other people trying their best to keep the other worlds intact. Maybe even if his own world imploded, the others would be alright. There would still be life somewhere. Maybe.
“Were they really you?” he asked, “Or did they just look like you?” He had seen shifters, look-alikes, that were evil and inhuman. But none of them were the person that they looked like, in any other way than on the surface. Not in a way that would mean the person they looked like could, or would, ever be anything like them.
He thought about saying she didn’t have to answer that. But he kept saying she didn’t have to do things, and she wanted to do it anyway. It was probably about time that he just started trusting-- or hoping-- that she wouldn’t do anything she didn’t want to do.
--
"I don't know. Some of them were worlds that Billy would make at some point, so they might have been. But how do you really know?" Even if they weren't her, them looking like her was just as bad. Some of them had her skills. Others had gotten powers in an accident. Sometimes, it was difficult to remember which ones belonged to which world. They were scattered, and yet some of the world's seemed so similar.
That was back when Loki was in a twelve-year old body, and Kate felt an odd sense of protection over him. Then he'd tricked Billy into aging him up, which would have been fine, but it turned out the trickster had gotten them into the whole mess in the first place. In retrospect, she really should have seen it. Hello. Loki. Looking back now, she could see the signs of it. While she believed that Loki came to care about them, it just wasn't enough to make up for the utter betrayal. If he'd just told them from the beginning…
Kate realized she was staring off into space and pulled out a small smile. "They seemed like it. Just got this feeling they were me."
--
Admittedly, this was not Sam’s area of expertise. For however many times it was that he’d been in plenty of different little bubbles of reality either created or accessed by angels, the dimensions Kate was talking about seemed far more diverse and-- well, real. Which wasn’t to say that the places he’d been hadn’t been real, at least for as long as he’d been in them, but he wasn’t sure how or if they existed otherwise. And there had never been other versions of him, not really. There was the actor that had played him on television, but from what Dean had said, Sam had simply stepped into his shoes. He’d never had to actually meet the guy-- and he certainly wasn’t going to count any of the people who LARPed as him as actual versions of himself.
But it resonated with him, all the same. “I’ve… been a worse version of myself, already,” he said, slowly. “And from what I’ve heard of the future, it’ll happen again in a different way. But I’ve never met another version of me.”
He shrugged. “There’s another universe where some guy plays me on TV, though. And apparently is a good enough likeness for me to be mistaken for him.”